


Steel

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brotherly Affection, Comfort, Conversations, Doubt, Hurt, M/M, Manipulation, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-09 23:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5558999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I will stand at my brother’s side,” Gabriel says. “Because I was not told that I could not. And never, in any life, or any battle, will I step away from you, Word or no.”</i>
</p><p>  <i>“Then you are as our brother is,” Michael laments softly. “You try to choose and every choice is your defiance.”</i></p><p>On the eve of the Fall, Michael and Lucifer talk, like brothers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steel

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS FOR OUR BELOVED [NOODLE!!!](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Darling, thank you so much for the most incredible year! We have bombarded you with stories to read, asked your opinion on many strange a thing, cuddled you, apologized for making you cry before making you cry more... you are incredible, and we hope you know that. You are invaluable, and we hope you know that.
> 
> This is just a little thing for you to start the new year off with a bang and a whimper.
> 
> Thank you, darling! <3

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Lucifer smiles. “No. But He does.”

The scrape of whetstone against Empyrean steel lifts Michael’s feathers, iridescent as oil in the vast fiery light of his brother’s domain. Simple strings fill the air with peace from instruments, unseen. His brother’s silken strands seem aflame, golden bright, as he sits bent across his blade. There is no chaos here, no noise of the vast legion girding themselves for rebellion.

Michael cannot recall a time he has seen Lucifer at such peace as this.

“Why are you here, little brother? Your defiance of His desires speaks volumes.”

“To speak with you,” Michael says, folding his wings closed as sandaled feet bring him closer. Hands uplifted, he is unarmed and unarmored. “Please.”

Light eyes lift and his brother’s expression softens to a gentle pity that he wears when he watches human beings. It is as much a kindness as it is a cruelty, that look. Michael’s skin crawls with the sensation of it against him. Lucifer blinks and runs the whetstone over his blade one more time, letting the last of the hum fade into nothing before straightening his shoulders, a fluid motion, stretch by stretch.

“Then speak freely,” he says. “You and I always could, Michael, that never was a barrier for us, only for Gabriel.” His smile flickers a moment, like a candle flame tilting in the wind. “Words,” he softly clarifies.

Michael’s attention shifts to the blade in his brother’s hands, sharp enough now to sever wings from their moorings with a single sweep, sharp enough now to cleave the host in twain. Lucifer watches only Michael, and laughs, once, before setting his blade aside on the dais by which he sits. It twists Michael’s belly to a knot to think it’s come to this. It pulls heat to his eyes, though he fights it away, to know why it has.

When he approaches his brother, Michael lowers himself in movements careful enough not to let his knees touch the ground first. He turns to sit on his hip, legs beside him, and on Lucifer’s lap, he rests his head. Lucifer could take up his blade again in an instant. He could end the War before it begins.

Michael closes his eyes.

“I don’t want to do this,” he says, voice so soft in this quiet space between them that he can hardly hear his own words. Words, words, words. Is that all that’s lead to this? Declarations and defiances, proclamations and persuasions.

“How cruel of Father,” Lucifer murmurs, “to grant His sword the power to feel empathy.” He hesitates a moment before setting a hand to Michael’s long, unruly curls. 

His fingers are always cool. For as long as Michael has known him, he has been cool. Like the moon, like eternal abysses above and below them. Lucifer’s touch can be as healing as Raphael’s, as soothing as Gabriel’s, as unkind as his own.

“Why would a father do this to His children, Michael?” he asks, softer still, and Michael knows this tone too, slithering like cool tendrils against his ears, around his throat, disappearing as soon as he exhales. It is a gift, as Gabriel’s Voice, as Michael’s Sword. “Why would He make us hurt each other if not to prove His dominion over us? And when is proof needed, Michael?” Lucifer whispers, splaying cold fingertips against Michael’s scalp. “When one feels no longer in control.”

Michael arches, shivers, and settles. “The Firmament cannot be sundered,” Michael says. “It will fall to ruin ununified.”

The bend of his brother’s fingers tugs his hair enough for Michael to sigh, breath spilling grey into the air. “Is it unity to pit us against each other? Will it strengthen the Firmament to force us to war?”

“If you come back to us -”

“And break my knees in bowing to Him.”

“If you come back to us -”

“And suffer His punishments for merely speaking of His failures.”

Michael tilts his head and buries his face against Lucifer’s thigh, lips parting against the gossamer-thin threads of his robe. “Speak not of Him,” he asks, “but think of us. Think of Raphael and Uriel. Think of Gabriel.” His throat clicks when he swallows, voice softening. “Think of me, brother. Are we, all, not enough to stay your hand?”

“I do not raise my hand to you,” Lucifer sighs, letting his legs uncurl and spread straight before himself. Michael adjusts his position to lie against him. They all did, once, younger than he only by a day of making, smaller than he only by their own choice. Siblings and soul mates and each a part of the other, curled as pups in a soft nest of their wings.

“I do not wish to raise my hand at all, but He gives me no choice. He gave none of you a choice, and I will not stand by and watch you worked as puppets for His pleasure.”

Michael makes a sound, soft and little, as he did in sleep, sometimes, when Lucifer watched from nearby. Gabriel would soothe his twin to calm again, with nothing more than a breath against his eyelids, a fingertip against his hair. They all have another. Each half of a whole. Yet he, alone, is whole himself. He, alone, can stand up against a Father that would split His children so.

He wonders, often, if perhaps he was not an error in judgment - a prototype of the host that would come after. When their Father saw the first threads of independence in Lucifer’s wholeness, did He not correct this oversight in the archangels who followed? None were created as Lucifer was - all were made of the same clay split in twain, their very breath born of the other’s body. Mankind itself was made in this image.

He was doomed before he began. Another mistake in the long litany of failures and destruction formed by their Father’s hand.

“There must be a resolution,” Michael says, shaking his head as if in response to his own suggestion of it. “There must be another way.”

“One cannot compromise with tyrants,” Lucifer sighs. “Tell me, Flood, what has happened when mankind has found other gods to pay tribute. Tell me, Sword, the fates of those who have attempted to compromise in the terms of their own existence. It is you who has been sent, your heart encased in hardening steel, to do His bidding.”

“Destruction,” whispers Michael, speaking quickly as he draws himself up, nearly shifting to his knees but stopping himself just as he does. He rests a hand on Lucifer’s leg and watches him, pleading, “But they are mortals, He loves them, but not enough to save them from the fates they’ve brought upon themselves. There are warnings, plagues, messages sent. They have time to heed Him and do not. You have time, too,” he says, squeezing his fingers to stop their shaking. “There is time to stop this from becoming -”

“From becoming what, brother?”

“Calamity.”

“My dear boy,” Lucifer sighs, cupping Michael’s cheek. “Do you not see how long it has been calamity? Heaven? Earth? The mess between them both? It has long since been anything but chaos and anger. Long since peace was an actual plausible outcome, and not just an aching hope pushed through prayer.”

Another flicker, then another candle-shift and Lucifer’s face changes, sharper lines and darker eyes, thinner lips and a regal stance that makes him wholly frightening. Michael shivers. He does not want to harm him. He does not fear his brother. He fears himself.

“You will not stop?”

“No.”

“You will force my hand?”

“I will urge you to use free will, as the mortals do. Seek it within yourself and unlock it where He has shut it out of you,” Lucifer tells him instead. “I will urge you to not raise your sword against my own but with it, sharp and triumphant over the cruelties and hypocrisies of our very existence.”

Michael seeks warmth as he turns his cheek against Lucifer’s hand, but his fingers may as well be marble, chill and unyielding. He looks to him, and seeks for a sign of the clever angel he knew in the first days of their formation. Lucifer, the most brilliant and charismatic of them all. Lucifer, whose own wisdom now falters and gives way to pride.

Michael has always admired him. He has always loved him.

Pain wrenches a sound from the archangel of war as he slowly works his way to standing, clasping Lucifer’s hand to his cheek.

“You know that I cannot,” Michael whispers. “You know that He has given me instruction.”

“Has He? He Himself, brother, our Father. Has He come to you and lifted you as His Sword?”

“The instruction was clear.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“Gabriel carried His message -”

“Gabriel,” sighs Lucifer, a thrum beneath his words like the reverberations of an earthquake, like the warning rumble of the large cats that roam the world beneath them. “And still you don’t see.”

“I see that this will end in suffering. Untold agony over unimaginable centuries, millenia, aeons of pain,” Michael tells him, stepping close but stopping the movement of his hand when Lucifer draws himself up tall. When Michael moves again, it is to tuck a strand of spun-gold hair behind Lucifer’s ear.

He thinks, for a moment, that he sees his brother smile, and Michael knows it will be the last time that he does.

“He pits us against each other to keep His hands clean,” Lucifer snorts. He steps away from Michael’s touch and lets his hands fall to his sides with a languid shrug. “And this is to whom you want me to bend my knee. I will not. Not if I am defeated, broken and humiliated. Not if all the host who stand with me fall.”

“Brother,” Michael whispers. “Please.”

“It is better to reign in Hell,” Lucifer laughs, “than to serve in Heaven.”

The words echo, carried by the broad strokes of impenitent laughter, throughout the halls of the Heaven he rejects. Michael can feel it like thunder, carrying through his body. He can feel sharp as lightning when his brother’s voice gives orders to his host to prepare. And when in his own space Michael takes up his armor, he holds it to his chest and finds no prayers that can be answered now by anyone but himself.

“You did not rest,” Gabriel’s voice comes as though it is Michael’s own, through him and around him, embracing and comforting. Michaels sighs.

“He said no.”

“He -”

“Said no,” Michael repeats. “To coming home to us. To making peace.”

A long pause then - enough to silence the sounds around them, it hangs so heavy - before Gabriel speaks again.

“You saw Lucifer.”

“Yes.”

“Now. Here. You saw him as we’re on the verge of -”

“You’re on the verge of nothing, Gabriel.” The breath in his words sharp enough to quiet even their Father’s chosen Voice. “You will stand above the fray with our sisters and watch what transpires.”

“Do you believe that I won’t fight?” Gabriel challenges, stepping nearer - only once, when Michael’s shoulders straighten.

“Has He told you to?” Michael asks, turning finally to face his brother. “Has our Father instructed you to fight?”

Gabriel’s gaze sharpens. “No.”

“Will you defy Him then?” Voice lilting, soft and pensive, Michael tilts his head and asks, “Or will you do as He has asked, because He has asked, and watch me go to war, keeping record with the others? Marking down the names of those who side with Lucifer, to keep track His list of grievances.”

“I will stand at my brother’s side,” Gabriel says. “Because I was not told that I could not. And never, in any life, or any battle, will I step away from you, Word or no.”

“Then you are as our brother is,” Michael laments softly. “You try to choose and every choice is your defiance.”

“I am _nothing_ ,” Gabriel hisses, stepping closer despite his twin’s tension, grasping his shoulders. “Nothing like our brother. I would not incite our Father’s wrath over disagreement.”

“So you would keep your words to yourself?”

“I would if it meant you remained safe,” Gabriel replies. “If it meant our sisters remained safe.”

“And him?”

Gabriel’s jaw works. He takes a deep breath and draws his hand through Michael’s hair, soothing the frown that furrows his brows.

“And him,” he relents.

Michael lifts his eyes towards the cosmos above and pours out his breath in place of prayer. He lets his armor slip to his feet and steps against Gabriel, chest to chest, heart to heart. They embrace, a hand on the other’s back, the other in their hair. Against Gabriel’s ear, Michael whispers.

“There is only one way that we survive this War. He cannot stand against the whole host of heaven, undivided.”

“Lucifer must bend,” Gabriel says, “to keep us whole.”

“He will not. He never will,” insists Michael, and as his meaning becomes clear, Gabriel holds him at arm’s length again, gripping his cheek and shoulder. “I can bend.”

“Swords do not bend,” snarls Gabriel. “They _break_.”

“If we side with him, all of us, Gabriel, you and me and our sisters - if we go with Lucifer, we end the suffering here. We end the suffering on Earth. Every savage cruelty, every wanton act of destruction!”

“What do you think He will do when all of His children abandon Him?” Gabriel hisses, holding tighter to Michael’s hair, not to hurt, but to keep, close and safe and mindful. “Do you think He will show mercy because His children took a stand?”

“He may -”

“He will cast us all down, Michael, as He will have you cast down Lucifer. He will not show mercy to things that He believes do not love Him.”

Michael’s eyes widen then, innocent and bright, the twin Gabriel loves more than himself, more than life itself, more than anything or anyone in the world, even their Father.

“Then Lucifer was right,” he whispers.

“Don’t say that.”

“He was right, and he will fall for it, be punished and hurt for it. Would you let our Father do that to him? When our brother is right?”

“I would.”

“Gabriel!”

“I would if it will save you.”

Michael tries to twist free but he’s held, lips curling over his teeth and hands braced against Gabriel’s chest. Even now, their hearts share synchronicity, the same tempo and the same pulse, quickening in tandem. He curls his fingers in his brother’s robe and ducks his head.

Not yet broken, but bending.

“How can He ask this,” Michael whispers. “How? How can He bring cataclysm to any of His children? How can I -”

“Breathe, brother.”

“How can I be expected to cast him down? To punish him for doing no wrong, but speaking truth, and see him suffer for the rest of time by my hand? Not our Father’s hand, _mine_ ,” Michael says. His eyes uplift, seeking between Gabriel’s. “If it were I, on the other side. If it were I facing Judgment, and you chosen to enact it, Gabriel, what would you do?”

“Never leave your side,” Gabriel reminds him, his own brows furrowed. “I would fall with you, come what may.”

“And our brother -”

“Goes alone,” Gabriel whispers, though the pain in his words shiver through Michael like a chill. “As always he has done. When he was made, alone, and as he is cast down, alone. Michael, that is not your doing, that is not your burden to carry. He carries his own, he cannot share them.”

“I would take them,” Michael breathes, and Gabriel holds him closer, in an embrace that shows him just how close they are, their hearts and souls and bodies one being ripped in two, made whole only when they are together. “When I went to him, I sat at his feet. I laid my head in his lap and I begged him to come back to us.”

Gabriel pushes away the thoughts of what their brother might have done in that moment, Michael offering himself in such a way. He has never pretended to think as highly of Lucifer as Michael has, but he will not do him disservice now by thinking him so without honor.

“And as he spoke the heresy of truth, do you know what I thought of?” Michael laughs, joyless. “I thought of how we all used to lay together, and talk of how we would shape the world to bring joy to Him. I thought of the peace we would try to reclaim for man, like the Garden before Lucifer shared his gift with them so soon.”

“In defiance.”

“They needed it,” Michael insists, shaking his head. “They had to be given the choice, and not be forced to goodness. I remembered walking them from the Garden and how we watched them spread their seed with fascination, seeing all the beauty and horror man proved capable of creating, and how we would know none of it if not for Lucifer. And I thought of kneeling.”

“Michael.”

“I nearly did,” he says, his smile far from reaching his eyes. “I thought if I did, then maybe you would too. The others in turn. We would listen to his wisdom, beyond the blasphemy of his words. We would remember. And although I imagined it - I hoped - I knew that you would not.”

“No,” agrees Gabriel. He strokes through Michael’s hair, heart clenching as Michael’s brow furrows.

“I knew, in that moment, I had to choose, and cast him down or find myself cast down with him,” Michael says. “I will never again know existence without guilt. But I could not imagine existence without you.”

“I’m here,” Gabriel assures him. “I am here with you, brother, I will always be.”

Michael shakes his head, not in disbelief but in agonized resignation. “Who will be with him?” he asks softly.

A cruelty, Gabriel has always thought, in giving the Sword such ability to feel. But he cannot see his brother suffer, he never could. Anything in his power to ease him, he will use. And the only thing truly his own, gifted and given, and not controlled, are his Words.

“You will,” Gabriel whispers to him. “You will be with him from the moment you lift your sword to the moment you are told to stay your hand.” He sets his palms to Michael’s cheeks and holds him close. “You will be his mirror, his opposite. For every strike he gives, you will return it, for every blasphemy he pours upon the ears of the innocent you will remind them, soul for soul, that you are with him, always.”

Michael doesn’t make a sound, but for the click in his throat when he swallows. For a long time - minutes, decades, it doesn’t matter here - he simply rests his cheek against his twin’s shoulder and lets his Voice fill him. Gabriel speaks the truth. He can do no less, no more than that.

“Our Father’s sense of irony,” Michael finally says, “has never been far from Him. Fitting, then, that he would separate us - no one loved Lucifer more than I - to spend the rest of our existence at odds.”

“A gift, in some way,” considers Gabriel. “To be allowed to know him, still, even across wars waged in body and spirit both.”

“I will not have to strike him down,” Michael says. “Someone who stands so strong. He will go, when the battle turns. He will leave rather than be defeated.”

At this, Michael attempts to smile, but it falters and fails in a way that Gabriel has never seen before. Something has changed, the innocence of their paradise lost. And when Michael slips from his brother’s arms to once more take up the breastplate of his righteousness, Gabriel seeks to feel his twin’s heart, and feels only steel instead.


End file.
